The importance of content marketing for a marketer today cannot be emphasized enough. This was reaffirmed once again when 95% of the marketers surveyed by us, claimed that content marketing is crucial to their post-sales content strategy.
Leading Brands Have Jumped the Bandwagon, What About You?
According to the Content Marketing Institiute (CMI), Eighty percent of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. A B2B brand that clearly understands this is Cisco. Cisco is the classic example of a company in a highly technical industry making clear, accessible content. Instead of focusing on technical jargon, they share their interest in technology and the Internet through their Blogs and Videos while always linking it back to their services.
ROI in the Form of Increased Visitors
Brands all over the world have recognized the importance of aligning content marketing to their overall marketing strategy, in order to attract and retain their customer base . They are constantly creating and curating relevant and valuable content, with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior.
For instance, after studying consumer behavior, Marriot Hotels launched Renaissance Hotels is Marriott’s experiential “lifestyle” brand, designed for business travelers who see travel as a way to explore the world. Hence, the brand designed two platforms to help their customers discover the local city outside their hotel (Navigators platform) as well as new music, films, arts, food and drinks inside the hotels (RLife LIVE program). Both programs provide rich content for engaging guests online. All the curated local discoveries (over 6,000 and growing) from their 155 hotels around the world now throb online. And the brand promotes them to start conversations in their social channels as well. The brand’s site is seeing record traffic and exponential growth in engagement while its Facebook community has grown to 270,000 likes.
Increase in the Number of Shares and Engagement Level
Another brand that provides great content to navigate their customers with ease through all the stages of a post-sales cycle – from consumption or usage of the product to brand advocacy, is Colgate. Colgate has a treasure trove of videos, interactive guides, and over 400 articles to educate their customers about dental hygiene and win their trust in the brand by encouraging enriching discussions. It’s a great example of a brand seeing itself as a publisher and using its depth of knowledge to provide valuable information to people, which is the key to content marketing success.
If You Don’t Embrace Content Marketing, Your Competitor Sure Will
The above statistics and examples prove that content is definitely the present and future of marketing, and as a marketer if you fail to recognize that, then you’re inviting probable dire consequences. There is every possibility that with the increasing adoption of this discipline, your competitors might just tap into this form of marketing and find unique ways to engage and win/retain customers which you missed. Thus it is imperative that in order to gain a competitive edge in the market, you have to create a content marketing strategy for your business.
